Sharon Drew Morgen - EzineArticles.com Expert Author

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the visionary and thought leader behind Buying Facilitation® the new sales paradigm that focuses on helping buyers manage their buying decision. She is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller "Selling with Integrity" as well as 5 other books and hundreds of articles that explain different aspects of the decision facilitation model that teaches buyers how to buy.

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Decisions Are Never Emotional
[Business:Sales] Imagine if instead of believing that unexpected decisions are emotional, we assume they have a very specific reason, even if we don't understand or agree. Then what? Is it just easier to believe the other person to be irrational? Do you remember, back in the day, when docs said that women suffering from PMS were hysterical and they needed to have a hysterectomy (that's where the word 'hysterical' comes from btw)? They didn't understand the physiology underlying the physical issues, and relegated the problem to emotions.

Be the GPS For Your Buyer
[Communications:GPS] Buyers have two identifiable responsibilities: maneuver through their internal, behind-the-scenes buy-in issues to ensure a trouble-free change process, and choose a solution that will address their stakeholder's criteria for systems excellence while maintaining the integrity of the system. Sales addresses one of these jobs, but not the other. In fact, we've never been taught the skills to help with the off-line issues buyers address.

Cold Calling Works - And It's Fun!
[Business:Sales-Teleselling] I'm here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects. And a whole lotta fun. I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face. Did you ever ask yourself why?

Buying Decisions - What Happens Behind The Scenes?
[Business:Sales] For some reason, it's very difficult for sales people to think beyond 'need' and 'solution:' We tend to think that because the buyer's need matches our solution, and because we're professionals who 'care,' the only thing buyers need to do is choose our solution. But if it were that easy, buying decisions would get made more often in our favor. We certainly would not lose as many sales as we do. The problem is that the buying decision is so, so much more complex than we can imagine as we stand on the outside looking in. Sales mysteriously treats an Identified Problem (my word for 'need') as if it were an isolated event. But it's not. There are ramifications to any change, and the ramifications are ones only buyers can see from the inside and we will never be privy to.

Price Objections Aren't Price Objections
[Business:Sales] Next time you hear your prospects give you price objections, it's not because of the price. The give price objections because they don't know the full value proposition that they'd be paying for. And it's not based on their need, or your features and functions. It's based on the buying criteria they want to meet internally.

Customers Don't Know How to Buy - Or Do They?
[Business:Sales] A friend recently returned from the recent Sales 2.0 conference and told me of a complaint she heard several times from attendees: "Customers don't know how to buy." This, said by sellers blaming buyers for not behaving as sellers would prefer. Or not responding appropriately to seller's selling patterns.

The Internal Customer - Is it a Sales Job?
[Business:Sales] What is the difference between selling to an internal customer and selling to an external customer? Nothing.

Decision Facilitation - Influencing the Offline Decisions
[Business:Sales] Lately, I've heard a few folks using the term that I have been using for 20: decision facilitation. But what, exactly, does that mean? Since I suspect there is a good chance I was the person who first put those particular words together - especially in the sales field - I'd like to offer my definition.

Sales 2.0 - Five Things You Shouldn't Expect
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Internet-Marketing] Here's the good news: Sales 2.0 is good for driving people to you. By simply offering a webinar, a free e-book, a White Paper, or some incentive, you can get folks to your site. If your material is good enough, they will Twitter about you, put a TinyUrl about you, link to your site, write you up on their blog. And here's the bad news: how do these folks decide to convert? How do they choose to make a purchase once you've captured their name? After you've sent them emails (and emails and emails)? Sales 2.0 is the New New Thing.

How Do You Know You're Listening to Your Clients in the Most Effective Way?
[Business:Sales-Training] As the main skill in helping buyers make sense of the decision making that needs to take place in this new economy, Listening has some very specific rules. Indeed, for true listening to take place, the listener must have choices as to their listening filters, ensure there is no bias (i.e. they aren't just listening for an opening to attempt to make a sale), and ensure a relevant response that will move the Other to begin examining possibilities.

Buying Decisions Are Not Based On Needs
[Business:Sales] As professionals, you have the tools to assess whether or not a prospect is a good risk for buying your product: you know the type of problem best suited to your product and the signs of 'need'- you ask good questions, analyze needs with a keen eye and ear; create presentations or professional pitches; and manage objections to ensure understanding and product differentiation. So why do you close only a small percentage of the business you recognize as yours?

Voice Mail, Gatekeepers, and Other Obstructions to Sales Success
[Business:Sales] Your first challenge is to get through the gatekeeper. Your charm is often effective: you're respectful and you will let her know you need her ("Can you please help me?"). But in this case, Acme has a receptionist who is not friendly. If you don’t know the name of the person you’re calling, she can’t help you. So you do more research – on line and with colleagues – and get the right name. You call back, and after being put through to the right department, you are met with yet another gatekeeper who doesn’t want to put you through.

Sales Recovery: How To Manage a Sale Going Wrong
[Business:Sales] Do you know the difference between which prospect you’ll close and which one you’ll lose? How can you tell, midway through a sale, whether you’re on track for success or you’ve lost the deal? How can you tell, in advance, that the sale won't close - ever?

How Buyers Buy: What Sellers Need to Know to Close Sales
[Business:Sales] It’s time to change your job. Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities.

Finding New Patients: Grow Your Practice with Integrity
[Business] What’s stopping you from getting all of the patients you desire? Is it your technique? Your office staff? Your reputation? The answers are most probably no, no, and no. What is it then? This article will help you to answer these questions and more.

Buy-In: What Is It? And Why Is It Important?
[Business:Change-Management] Buy-in is sought when an adjustment – often for logical, necessary, or profitable reasons - is required within the status quo. It can be a mission statement change, or a new software solution, a new team member, or a new initiative, for example. While the impetus for the change may differ, plans for implementation seem to be predicated on the basic belief that buy-in can be achieved, and a new set of actions agreed upon and carried out, once a logical, congruent case is made for the requested change.

Decision Teams: Who Is On Them? And How Do We Interact?
[Business:Sales] The buyer is the only one – THE ONLY ONE – who has the means, the knowledge, the political influence, and the capacity to align and manage all of the internal elements that need to be addressed before a buying decision can be made. For some reason - sellers, like change managers, coaches, and consultants – believe that because they recognize and understand the area immediately around the problem that their product solves, and they’ve seen it countless times, they know how the buyer needs to buy.

Objections: What Are They And Why Do We Get Them?
[Business:Sales] If the prospect has an obvious, unresolved problem, why would they defend their status quo, you might ask? Because even if the problem is obvious to them, their total solution might not be. And your product – even if necessary, and even if relevant - is only a piece of their solution, not their entire solution. Remember that your product is merely a potential response to the business problem they need resolved. If the solution will be more trouble than the problem it solves, it's not worth the effort.

Bringing Clients in the Door: How Professionals Can Encourage Business
[Business:Marketing] You’re a professional – either a doctor, or a dentist, or an artist. Maybe you’re an independent sales person who works on commission, or a speaker who must sell yourself. Given you know your craft but may not have the same level of savvy to garner all of the patients or clients that you deserve, how indeed do you get the business to come in the door?

The People Factor: Collaborative Decision-Making
[Business:Change-Management] We all generally get the 'doing' just fine: we know how to introduce strategic initiatives, how to begin the implementation process, how to offer our people 'change management' programs so the new systems (or whatever) are up on time and do what they are supposed to do. But how do we help our people adjust, and do a competent job, when we are asking them to simultaneously work with new people, new technology, new vocabularies, new outcomes, and new job descriptions – and aren't teaching them how to juggle all of that while maintaining their daily job requirements?

Facilitating Decisions: A New Way To Boost Sales
[Business:Sales] For years, marketers have assumed that because they can't figure out just how or why a consumer chooses one product over another, the decision is an emotional one. The marketer's hope - and a hope is the operative word here - is that their product is positioned effectively for when the 'emotional decision' is ready to be made. I'm here to tell you that except on small or unique items, there is a logical, sequential decisioning system that each person or group uses before a final decision gets made. The good news is that this system can be both followed and influenced.

Change: It Doesn't Have To Be So Difficult
[Business:Change-Management] Why does change appear to be so difficult? Because our status quo seems set in concrete and we don’t know how to go about making changes unless we have some assurance that a new comfort will result.

Referrals: Getting Good Business By Doing Good Business
[Business:Sales] In this essay, we'll focus on getting old clients to come back and referrals. How do you get them? How do you ask for them? How do people choose to come back? How can you get people back when they don't want to come back?

How Sellers Can Take Control
[Business:Sales] What power and control do sellers actually have? When you're using product/information-based sales methods, you actually have control only over your product data; you have no control over the buyer's internal, hidden, buying decisions. You want control? Lead buyers through their decision criteria with Facilitative Questions.

Who is Responsible?
[Business:Strategic-Planning] The problem is that unless each of us is willing and able to take the responsibility to create a win-win interaction, nothing gets fixed.

This is a Sales Call: How to Begin Prospecting Calls with Integrity
[Business:Sales-Teleselling] Make your call about helping them make discoveries and decisions. Don't use your time to push anything. Otherwise, you're wasting a great opportunity to find a new client and introduce your brand of integrity.

The Struggle to Decide: The Paths Customers Take to Solve Problems
[Business:Sales] Think about it for a moment: every sales problem that ever existed still exists. Thousands of books have been written on ‘getting through' the gatekeeper, making ‘the' appointment, handling objections, understanding the buyer/problem/buying environment and closing the sale. Indeed, these are the very same hindrances that Dale Carnegie wrote about in 1937. We continue to experience at least a 90% failure rate as a result of the process itself.

How We Build a 90% Failure Rate into the Sales Process
[Business:Sales-Management] In general, every industry closes less than 10% of the prospects they call (first call to close), with over 90% falling in the 7% category. And, since there is no scientific way of knowing which prospects fall into the 7%, we continue running after all ‘hot' prospects until they disappear. And then we make excuses for those we lost while having no earthly idea why we actually lost them. Basically, we are out of control; the only control we seem to have is over product pitch and our ability to chase seemingly hot prospects. Why is it ok to have such a low success rate?

What is a Pitch?
[Business:Sales] Why aren't you closing all those people who seem to need your product? Why isn't your great pitch getting you the business you deserve? Why isn't your care/brains/Prada shoes/marketing/branding and knowledge of the prospect's business (not to mention that your brother-in-law knows the assistant to the CEO) getting buyers to recognize they need you? Or, to take it a step further, to choose you easily over the competition?

Outsourcing: The Unspoken Costs
[Business:Outsourcing] We’ve all dealt with service people from India when we call to ask a question of a vendor. First there is the long, long delay before the phone gets answered. And then there is the accent. Are the service reps and techies smart? Yes, they are. Are they smarter than Americans? It depends on the person. But they are always cheaper. Do they do the job? Usually. Depends on how well they’ve been trained and managed. They certainly know what to say, how to say it, how to answer questions.

Social Network Software
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Social-Networking] In recent years, we’ve attempted to use technology to overcome all of the inherent problems sales creates. We’ve tried SFA, CRM, and now Social Network Software. And all they do is continue to operate on the same beliefs that sales has always worked from: people will buy if they like/understand/need/recognize the product, or like the sales person. And that’s patently untrue. We’ve just not known what else to do. And the gulf between the sales end and the buyer’s end keeps widening.

Going Global: Communication Across Mental Boundaries
[Business:Sales] Sellers still work hard at making their product fit the buyer rather than the other way 'round. Even the newer form of selling methodologies are different forms of traditional sales, just with a customer focus assertion as a new 'angle'. Sales continues to be based on selling something. The belief systems and the very fabric of the thinking has remained the same for a long, long time. And in this global market we're in today, the rules, the thinking, and the focus must change or there will be continued loss of revenues.

The Trusted Advisor Relationship: What Is It, and What Should It Be?
[Business:Sales] For the past months, maybe a year, I've been hearing sales groups talk about the need to become Trusted Advisors (I'll call them TAs). I suspect that the problems cropping up in the sales arena these days – the increased length of the sales cycle, the increased levels of competition - are leading sales management to base their initiatives on being of true service to prospects, as a way to seem different from the competition. But by everyone attempting to become TAs, and by not changing the basic skill set – or belief set or outcome - of the sales force, sellers are doing more of the same, but with a different name.

What Is A Proposal? And Why Do You Need One?
[Business:Sales-Management] Do you know anyone who regularly wins bids? Or can boast a balanced relationship between doing the hard work of producing proposals and regularly winning the business? I’m always amazed at how much energy people put into responding to a Request For Proposal (RFP) in relation to the level of success – or non-success – they realize. And yet they continue to put time and resources into this relatively unproductive activity.

Business Ethics: How The Sales Function Can Transmit Company Values
[Business:Ethics] What causes money, greed, manipulation, and self-interest to prevail at the expense of serving? What's stopping sellers from using their jobs to promote respect, integrity, servant-leadership, collaboration, and trust – for their customers, for their companies, and for themselves? Why is there a belief that it's not possible to serve and make money? To support and be aggressive? To be a trusted advisor and close rapidly?

Lead Generation: What Is It worth?
[Business:Marketing] Our business environment has changed dramatically. Companies must now be disciplined and market-driven if they want to stay alive. They must do more - much more - than create a buzz, or have a well-known brand. Just read the papers: the stock and balance sheets of brand names have plummeted faster, in some cases, than the unknown companies.

Managing Motivation
[Business:Management] Today, businesses are dealing with massive change issues spearheaded by new strategic initiatives around technology. So much is possible! We can demographically get into our customer’s heads, craft alliances that accentuate our creativity and negotiating skills, ask employees to deliver projects and new products in high-speed time frames, target audiences we never were able to reach before. But we’re in more turmoil now than we’ve ever been.

Selling the Difficult: How to Sell What People Don't Understand How to Buy
[Business:Sales] I'll play a seller, using conventional selling methods, selling something difficult to understand; you be the prospective buyer. As we go through the process together, note your reactions, how your beliefs are being challenged, what 'objections' and emotions come up for you as I try to 'sell' you.

Influencing Change - A Guide for Sellers, Coaches, and Supervisors
[Business:Management] Until now, our communication rules have assumed that when we kindly or persuasively offer others good information that could solve problems and achieve successful results, or coach them toward making a much-needed change, or even just pitch a product they sorely need, we can expect a positive reception. Obviously, if our communication partner (called Partner in this article) has a problem and we’ve got the true solution – and we do! We do! – they should take our advice. But they don’t.

Gatekeepers
[Business:Sales] When I ask salespeople to define what a gatekeeper is, I generally hear: “Someone who keeps out people who will waste the boss's time.” But gates are two-sided - they open as well as close: a gatekeeper's job is actually to make sure the boss gets to spend his/her time efficiently.

Save Your Breath: How To Sell In Trade Shows Without Pitching
[Business:Sales] You stand there, in front of your great presentation material, wearing just the right suit or logo shirt, handing out some gimmick with your company name on it, wearing just the right smile or look of professionalism. You might even have a fishbowl at the table - or some type of contest material - to collect business cards of passers by for later use in your sales process. But the worst part of doing a trade show is losing your voice.

Differentiating Yourself from the Competition
[Business] It’s getting harder and harder to differentiate yourself from the competition these days. Especially when your competition is global, offer additional value through their stellar service, and look and sound similarly wonderful to your offering. Not to mention that the new buzz words - ‘adding value’ and ‘trusted advisor’ – are universal, making it even harder to distinguish what you bring to the party as being superior.

The History of Sales: Dale Carnegie is Still with Us
[Business:Sales] It's becoming a known fact that buyers want a solution, not to solve a problem. So the sales community has learned the new lingo about helping buyers discover their solution. But they don't use skills that will support this discovery, and continue to use problem-solving techniques (information push, product-focused) as a way to sell.